


yuánfèn

by freloux



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5398130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>a relationship brought by fate or destiny; the binding force which eventually links two people in love</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	yuánfèn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samyazaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/gifts).



> This was an absolute joy to write. I loved getting back into this world - it brought back a lot of wonderful memories for me. Thank you for giving such interesting prompts! I hope you have a fabulous Yuletide. <3

He hates the way, when he says that "we could do pizza," his voice comes out squeaky, earnest. His _everything's-just-fine-why-do-you-ask_ voice. There's so much promise, hope, possibility in her voice when she replies, "and lots of other things." It breaks his heart, watching her walk away like that. And then she's pushed into the mirror and disappears. Snatched away.

His coat still smells like her for weeks afterwards.

He regrets not going through the mirror right away. They shut it down, make it dangerous to go through. Regulate who can and can't move between the worlds. All of a sudden, you need the right papers. And the right papers are, of course, nigh impossible to come by. As good as Jack is as King, he does have to appease people. He knows who keeps him in power, so he plays to them.

So the resistance remains, albeit in smaller numbers. Someone has to fight. Keep the Man on its toes. Hatter works with them to go through after Alice. Months pass. Months spent studying the shaky connection that the mirror provides between Wonderland and that other world. Alice's world. Months of hunching in dingy back rooms under flickering lights, reading and rereading everything that Lewis Carroll fellow wrote about the original Alice. More information can usually be extracted in exchange for some leftover Oyster emotions, slipped under the table to anyone who claims to know _something_. Hatter knows that it's all shaky rumor at this point, but desperation makes men do funny things. He doesn't care.

He wonders what it's like there, in her world. Alice never really told him, so he spends time daydreaming. He imagines that it's just as fantastic and scary as Wonderland is. It would have to be, he reasons, to produce an Alice of legend - _twice_.

When he's not working with the resistance, Hatter relives his memories of Alice. He remembers when he first saw that weird and wonderful little Oyster. People in Wonderland aren't blessed with emotions, but Hatter remembers feeling something there - maybe some kind of base reaction - at the bottom of his stomach. Mostly he was just impressed: Oysters don't usually think of _escaping_. She couldn't be, she _wasn't_ the Alice of Legend that he'd heard so much about. But she had the same spark as that original Alice. That spark that kept hope alive for people like Hatter. The reason why Wonderland folk passed those stories down in the first place.

And that's when Hatter started to believe that it could all change. (It didn't hurt that she was, as he'd said, a very pretty girl in a very wet dress.)

That's why he's doing this now. He's got to find her again, got to find that spark. She lives on, in Wonderland, as the "Other Alice." The resistance talks about her in hushed voices. But it's nowhere near the same. Hatter can't keep holding onto the the legends, the stories, the memories: he needs her for real.

Eventually he figures out that there's some kind of temporal connection between their worlds. The resistance members, those few who've made it there and back, explain it to him. How this many months in Wonderland is only _moments_ in their time. So Hatter builds a calendar. He plans it out as carefully as he can, to make sure that not as much time will have passed for her. He hopes she won't have forgotten about him.

More months pass and finally Hatter makes it through. He saves up enough Lust to bribe his way into getting the papers for a round trip through the mirror. (C'mon, he knows what the Wonderland upper brass _really_ need and want.) Of course, they don't need to know that for now, it's just a one-way deal. They read his papers, and Hatter squares his shoulders, tries to look official. Nothing braces him for when they abruptly push him through the mirror.

Traveling through the mirror is not an experience that Hatter wants to repeat anytime soon. It's like he's being stretched out and compressed all at once. Warm pain floods his bones, there's pressure behind his eyes, then a brilliant white light - is he dying?

Finally, he thumps onto a construction site in the middle of an anonymous city. Hatter looks around quickly to make sure there isn't anyone about, then hides behind a huge metal thing labelled "Caterpillar." Well, Caterpillars have been pretty good in Hatter's experience, so that's a start.

She's got to be here somewhere. He can't have worked this hard for nothing. He closes his eyes and breathes in, then almost immediately wishes he hadn't. Alice's world doesn't smell a thing like Wonderland. Wonderland, with its mossy earth-smell, a scent that unfolds and deepens the longer you inhale. Like there are secrets hiding in the very fabric of its air. Here, everything smells flat. It smells _fake_. Hatter frowns. But he knows that this is just another step in the game. He studies the calendar he kept hidden in his coat pocket. Not long now.

He's got skills to blend in quickly, which serves him well when he becomes a construction worker. The crew finds it odd, how impressed Hatter is with everything. He can't get over the weird machine in the office that spits out...what do they call it? "Liquid awake," one of them laughed. Hatter isn't that unfamiliar: he was essentially an emotions dealer back in Wonderland. What's incredible to him, though, is how readily _available_ it is here. He hits that button every morning and liquid awake comes blurting out of the machine. He loves it.

They ask him almost daily where he's from. Hatter learns to say that it's "not far from here." He keeps his interests to himself. When they ask him his name, he blurts out "David." It was some name he saw randomly on one of those shiny things he walks past on the way to the construction site. A magazine, yeah, that's it.

He gets himself a tiny apartment that isn't far from the construction site. It overlooks a narrow alley. Hatter sometimes goes exploring back there, late at night when he's bored and hasn't got anything better to do. There's a mirror at the back of the alley: a huge mirror with a gold frame, propped against some debris. Hatter knows better than to touch it. He's had his share of mirrors for a lifetime.

When he's not exploring, Hatter is counting down. He knows that the temporal connection will eventually bring him to Alice. Still, it almost feels like a fluke when he does finally find her, crumpled in that alleyway. It nearly breaks his heart again. He shines a light over her tiny body, just to make sure that it's really her. Then he yells out for help, and they get her to a hospital as quickly as possible. (It still feels much too slowly.)

Hatter tries not to get overwhelmed with the beeping and the busyness and the white suits of the nurses. He's reminded of the Heart Casino. His heart is in his mouth as he watches Alice under the monitors. When asked, Hatter mumbles an excuse about who he is to her. He has to remind himself that it was basically true.

The nurses get a bit too suspicious, though, especially when Alice's mother finally arrives. Hatter is dismissed, but before he blusters his way out of the hospital, he asks Carol if he can check in on Alice later. She agrees, even if she looks sort of quizzically at him.

A few days later, Hatter walks up to Alice's apartment. His heart pounds as he waits for her. He feels a bit lightheaded; his stomach has gone all twisty. It's just like that split second back in Wonderland, just before he was pushed into the mirror. "Come meet David," Carol calls.

Then - incredibly, impossibly - she's _there_ , running towards him, yelling "Hatter!" He says "finally" and they kiss and it's all a wonderful, wonderful blur for a good five minutes. Just holding her, breathing her in.

Carol clears her throat and they break apart. "Who are you, again?" she asks. Hatter can tell she's trying to be polite.

"He - he saved my life," Alice explains.

"No," Hatter corrects. "She saved mine."


End file.
